OT. Firing up an old computer

Change the cmos battery.... then set the clock in the bios options. Then you should get an option to save and exit. OR just go to the clock setting option and change the time.Then it should still give you a save and exit option.... Repeat until you fit a new battery !

On Tue, 11 Nov 2014 10:13:10 -0600 amdx wrote in Message id: :

F10 or ESC. possibly? What motherboard and BIOS?

If the hard drive is compatible with a USB cradle thingie, use that on another PC.

On Tue, 11 Nov 2014 10:13:10 -0600, amdx Gave us:

That is where you start. You have to replace that.

Then, since they all basically differ, more hdw info is likely needed for further assistance.

I was ready to change the Battery and then found it is a style labelled Real Time Clock Lithium Battery, with about 20 pins. I'm moving the drive to a different computer. I tried 3 more computers before I found one that booted. When I install the second hard drive do I move the pins to Slave? Thanks, Mikek

Tried those, thanks. I've moved on, putting the drive in a different computer. Thanks, Mikek

Ah, I do have one of those, that is an option. Maybe I should do that before installing the drive in a different computer. The drive has the only copy of an original program to run an impedance meter through a GBIP hookup. I hope to get it working, It will run a frequency scan and spit out data for Excel to draw beautiful impedance graphs.

Thanks, Mikek

It is a Real Time Clock Lithium Battery. I'm working on a different solution.

Thanks, Mikek

The thing has lost its CMOS memory battery and so has garbage settings.

Actually you do! If you set the CMOS contents to whatever the motherboard safety defaults are and then let the BIOS detect the disk for itself then it will probably let you in with save and exit.

More probably it is stone dead and the CMOS contents make no sense. You can sometimes get away with rebooting after the thing has been on power for quarter of an hour and have it get past the BIOS.

The PC will only boot if the CMOS contents are sensible. The date will be a bit odd ISTR 1-1-1980 but the PC will boot.

Only if it is on the same cable with a master.

I remember doing this once with an old computer and the durn machine booted the drive I was trying to copy data from! I have no idea why it picked the slave drive over the master to boot from. Maybe that was a BIOS setting that was never noticed until a second drive was installed.

What OS did this old drive use ? How old is this software ?

The reason I as is that some programs are not portable (my term) meaning ju st copy the directory and run the EXE on another machine. ALot of older pro grams are like that, I have a few. But alot of them won't and you might nee d to find the DLLs or even registry entries.

That's not a battery! It is a real time clock and the CMOS BIOS config memory, with the lithium battery included insude the package. You can usually crack them open and replace the coin cell.

As for getting out of the BIOS screen, you can try Esc or F2, it differs between different BIOS creators.

Jon

I don't know. I have put the drive in 2002 machine. I hope to give it a try some time today, but it is getting late and I have a few other things to get done.

Thanks, Mikek

Tried them all no luck. Thanks, Mikek

A lot of golden-oldy programs, like my venerable Eudora E-mail client, only use a .INI file and don't write anything to the registry, thus are like the Energizer bunny... they'll run under most any Windows OS

...Jim Thompson

On Tue, 11 Nov 2014 14:51:52 -0600, amdx Gave us:

On older gear, typically the "Del" key would get you in. From there you would select "save and exit" or "exit without saving" on the "boot screen" to get out. Many have instructions at the screen bottom or such. Boot if it continually boot INTO the BIOS screen, then the setting are empty, and the battery is the reason.

I'm not versed enough understand all I'm doing. I do recall at least one INI. file that I could be changed depending on some of the characteristics of the probes used and the burden resistance. I see some correspondence to the people we had write the program dated 2001. I didn't notice an EXE. but there's a lot I didn't see on the drive. So only 13 years old, but a couple of computer generations.

I see I need a few repairs on the interface, so I had to clean my bench to be able to work on it. Probably won't get to work on it till Thursday now.

Mikek

It usually says. (often F10 or escape)

Yeah, you should deal with that unles you don't plan on rebooting any time soon. battery is often model CR2032

It's a regular 0.3" PDIP CMOS RTC chip potted with a lithium battery, they can be opened and the chip connected to a replacable battery.

yeah, unless you have cable select, or connect to a second IDE interface (in which case it's optional to do that)